April 1st is the birthday of French gastronome Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826), famous for his book Physiologie du goût, a witty meditation on food. April fools' day is also the perfect day to eat your words and play with them as the "books" are consumed on the day of the event. This ephemeral global banquet, in which anyone can participate, is shared by all on the internet and allows everyone to preserve and discover unique bookish nourishments.

Participation rules are as follows:

1 the event must be held on April 1st (or close to that date)

2 All edible books must be "bookish" through the integration of text, literary inspiration or, quite simply, the form.

3 Organizations or individual participants must register with the festival’s organization (go to Registration) and see to it that the event is immortalized on the international festival website (www.books2eat.com).

Brillat-Savarin's Physiologie du goût (The physiology of taste; or, Meditations on transcendental gastronomy) is classed in 641.013 Gastronomy. The International Edible Book Festival, a festival of food and drink with the theme of the book, is classed in 641.079 Festivals of food and drink (641 Food and drink plus T1--079 Competitions, festivals, awards, financial support). Cooks preparing for the Festival are cooking for a special occasion (641.568 Cooking for special occasions). April Fool's Day is classed in 394.262 Holidays of March, April, May.

(The "Lie" in Lie groups rhymes with "bee" and not with
"by", since it comes from the name of the Norwegian mathematician Sophus Lie)

From the point of view of classification, Lie groups are interesting, because they draw from several
areas of mathematics. They are groups, which puts them in algebra; they involve
continuity, a concept drawn from analysis; and they involve symmetry, a concept
drawn from geometry. In addition, Lie groups are used in several areas of
mathematical physics, including string theory.

March 19, 2007

We received the sad news this morning from our colleagues at the National Library of Florence that Dr. Luigi Crocetti passed away on March 10. Dr. Crocetti made many contributions to the library and information science field; I will highlight here his contributions to the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) system. Dr. Crocetti was the leading Italian expert on the DDC, and oversaw the translation and publication of five editions of the DDC into Italian, starting with the Italian translation of Abridged Edition 11 in 1987. In preparation for the translation of Abridged Edition 11, Dr. Crocetti sent Daniele Danesi, a member of the Italian editorial team, to the Dewey editorial office at the Library of Congress. This was the first time a translation team member had traveled from outside the U.S. for an extended working visit with the editorial team in order to gain a deeper understanding of the editorial process. The Italian translation of DDC 20 marked the first use of computer applications in the translation editing process. The procedures developed between the Dewey editorial team and the Italian translation team for DDC 20 became the basis for the standard translation guidelines that are in use today for all translations.

At the time of his death, Dr. Crocetti was involved in the translation of DDC 22. The Italian translation of DDC 22 is scheduled to be published later this year, and will be dedicated to his memory.

March 15, 2007

This week ushers in an annual three-week-long frenzy in the United States known as "March Madness" -- single elimination tournaments for division I collegiate basketball, held under the auspices of the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association). There are separate tournaments for men and women. Involving 64 teams (both those who, by winning their conferences, receive automatic bids and those who, based on their records, receive at-large bids) and distributed across more than a dozen sites, each tournament moves relentlessly toward determining the year's national champion. As winning teams advance into subsequent rounds, they become part of the Sweet Sixteen, the Elite Eight, and then the Final Four. (You can keep track of the progress of the men's tournament here, of the women's tournament here.)

Basketball in general is classed in 796.323 Basketball, while collegiate basketball is classed in 796.32363 College basketball. Since March Madness involves teams from only U.S. schools, its number is 796.323630973 College basketball in the United States, built by adding T1--09 Historical, geographic, persons treatment, plus the notation --73 United States from Table 2 Areas, Periods, Persons.

The NCAA is classed in 796.04306073, built by adding T1--06 Organizations, facilities, management (as modified under 796) to 796.043 College sports, then adding further to the base number --060 the notation T2--73 United States from Table 2 Areas, Periods, Persons, as instructed at T1--0603-0609 National, state, provincial, local organizations. The addition of T1--06 is sanctioned by the note at T1--04 to "add other standard subdivisions --01-09 to it and its subdivisions as required." The preference table at T1 directs us to use T1--04 before any other standard subdivision.

March 11, 2007

Girl Scouts of the USA are celebrating their 95th birthday
this week. Juliette Gordon Low founded
the first troop in March 12, 1912, in Savannah, Georgia. She brought the idea from England, where she
was a friend of Robert Baden-Powell and his sister Agnes, who had organized
the Boy Scouts and the Girl Guides. Girl
Guiding UK is preparing to celebrate its 100th birthday in 2010. According to the World Association of Girl
Guides and Girl Scouts, the movement had taken hold in ten countries by 1912. In 1919 Low represented the United States at
the first International Council of Girl Guides and Girl
Scouts, forerunner of the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl
Scouts.

Works about Girl Scouts and Girl Guides are classed in 369.463
Girl Scouts and Girl Guides. Biographies
of Juliette Gordon Low, such as Juliette Low, are classed in 369.463092
Biographies of Girl Scouts and Girl Guides (369.463 Girl Scouts and Girl Guides
plus T1--092 Persons).

March 09, 2007

Nothing delights a Dewey editor more than a snippet of Dewey in the midst of leisure reading. We’ve suffered nearly a year-long drought of Dewey teasers--imagine then my delight last night just before drifting off to sleep to encounter the following passage in a novel I’m reading:

Reshelving books, he began to notice plays. Toward the end of Dewey Decimal 822, Walter became acquainted with a two-foot stretch of small blue clothbound books with gilt titles on the spines. The plays of Shakespeare.

Dewey teaser rules are here, and teasers of the past can be found in the Dewey blog category, DDC in arts and culture. The first person to identify the source wins a citation in the Dewey Hall of Fame. Extra points are awarded for citing the WorldCat.org entry!

Works of fiction by Gabriel García Márquez, both in the original Spanish and in translation, are classed in 863.64 Spanish fiction, 1945-1999 (built with 86 from the add instruction under 860.1-868 Subdivisions of Spanish literature plus 3 from T3A—3 Fiction plus 64 1945-1999 from the period table under 860.1-868, following the instructions under T3A—31-T3A—39 Fiction of specific periods). Since 1999, the same period table has been applied to all literature in the Spanish language, regardless of country of origin.

March 01, 2007

Today, Yellowstone National Park is 135 years old. By act of Congress on March 1, 1872, Yellowstone National Park was established in the Territories of Montana and Wyoming "as a public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people" and placed "under exclusive control of the Secretary of the Interior." The founding of Yellowstone National Park began a worldwide national park movement--more than 100 nations contain some 1,200 national parks or equivalent preserves.

Yellowstone National Park has its own Table 2 notation, T2--78752. Interdisciplinary works on the park are classed at 978.752 Yellowstone National Park.

December 2016

OCLC

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